“You can probably tell me how I could transmit a copy
of Kehama to your friend
Leyden, for whom, though I do not
personally know him, I have always felt a very high respect, regarding him,
with one only exception (which might be more properly expressed to any person
than to you,) as a man of more true genius and far higher promise than any of
his contemporary countrymen.

“No doubt you have seen Pasley’sEssay. It will be, in the main, a book after your own heart, as it
is after mine. He talks sometimes of conquest when he should talk of
emancipation. A system of unlimited conquest leads at last to the consequences
which we have seen exemplified in the fate of the Roman empire. For ourselves,
I would wish no other accession of dominion than Danish Zealand and Holland in
the North, with as many islands as you please in the Mediterranean; Italy to be
formed into one independent state under our protection, as long as it needed
it. I believe, that the Ministry do not want the inclination to act vigorously;
but they want public opinion to go before and protect them against the
opposition. These men, and their coadjutors, the Morning Chronicle and the Edinburgh Review, have neither patriotism, nor
principle, nor feeling, nor shame, to stand in their way. They go on predicting
the total conquest of the Peninsula, with as much effrontery as if they had not
predicted it two

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LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE

Ætat. 36.

years ago,—nay, even asserted
that it was then completed; and they deliver their predictions in such a way,
that it requires more charity than I possess not to believe that they wish to
see them fulfilled; for this is the last and worst, yet the necessary, effect
of party spirit, when carried so far as these politicians carry it. I do not
know that I ever regretted being alone so much as when the news of Graham’s victory arrived. It gave me more
delight than I could well hold, and I wanted somebody to share it with me. We
shall have great news, too, from Portugal. Massena has no lines to fall back upon; and if Lord Wellington can but bring him to action, we
know what the result must be. How happy his retreat must make Lord Grenville, who had just delivered so wise an
opinion upon the state of Portugal in the House of Lords!

“Longman’s new Review will interfere with the Quarterly; and so far as it succeeds, so far will
it prevent the extension of our sale. I have not learnt who are the proprietors
of it,—not Longman himself, for he wrote to me some
eight or ten weeks ago, wishing me to bear a part in it, and giving me to
understand that it was set on foot by some independent M.Ps., so at least I
understood his language. Of course I returned a refusal, upon the ground of my
previous connection with the Quarterly. They have set
out better than we did, though they have a considerable portion of heavy
matter, and their first article ought to have been in a very different tone.

Yours ever truly,

R. Southey.”

Thomas Grahame, baron Lynedoch (1748-1843)
Scottish general who served as a division commander under Wellington during the
Peninsular War, for which he was raised to the peerage in 1814.

William Wyndham Grenville, baron Grenville (1759-1834)
Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he was a moderate Whig MP, foreign secretary
(1791-1801), and leader and first lord of the treasury in the “All the Talents” ministry
(1806-1807). He was chancellor of Oxford University (1810).

John Leyden (1775-1811)
Scottish antiquary, poet, and orientalist who assisted Walter Scott in compiling the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.

André Massena (1758-1817)
Napoleon's field marshall who was defeated by Wellington in the Peninsular
Campaign.

Sir Charles William Pasley (1780-1861)
Educated at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, he served in the artillery and as an
engineer, developing innovative instructional methods for soldiers.

Morning Chronicle. (1769-1862). James Perry was proprietor of this London daily newspaper from 1789-1821; among its many
notable poetical contributors were Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Rogers, and Campbell.

The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.